Note: The Monday Taki post is up. This week I use the expression “of course” far too many times. Of course I do. There’s also new content behind the green door.  I’m watching Deep Space Nine and not liking it very much.

It is easy to forget, but one of the predictions about the post-scarcity, technological age was that it would result in a great leveling of society. Class it was argued, was the result of there never being enough for everyone. Once there was plenty, there would be no need for some to horde at the expense of others. Of course, the high-tech society would abandon the silliness of class distinctions. Everyone would wear gray Lycra jumpsuits and happily perform their roles in society.

Like so much that comes from the Utopians, the class-less society assumed things about people that could never be true. Hierarchy is an essential part of the human condition, which means signaling status is a feature, not a bug. The rich guy driving the expensive car is signally his status in the same way a chieftain would signal his status with ornamental weaponry. Even in a world where everyone can rely on having plenty of the essentials, status and status signally still matter.

In fact, they probably count for more in a rich society than a poor one. A guy who is worth fifty million can do a lot of signaling. He can have a supercar, a big house in the country, expensive tastes. The billionaire can have all of those things, of course, and that is a big problem. How does the billionaire show he is a bigger fish than the guy worth fifty million? He needs to have other stuff like political access, cultural influence, and global attention. His status is measured in attention.

Attention as currency is not confined to the plutocrats. This is one distinguishing feature of the media age that arose with the American empire. Before WW2, the super-rich would build mansions and fund public projects like theaters, colleges, and museums, but this was always what the top of society did to reinforce public virtue. In the medieval period, the elite built churches, and cathedrals. In the Renaissance they supported great artists and later they supported the sciences.

The world changed after the war as material progress suddenly accelerated with the spread of American-style capitalism. Material excess first took root in America and with it the growth of the attention society. Popular culture, after all, is about getting public attention in some way. In the early phase of pop culture, people got famous through some talent for entertainment. Now people get attention by being unusually freakish, deranged, or hysterical. The crazier the better.

This is why so many people now experience the world with their mobile device held up in front of their face. They are mining their daily experience for the currency of the age, which is often a viral video or a lot of likes on the social media platform. It is also why the super-rich are fond of supporting increasingly deranged social fads. If the freak show is the cathedral of the modern age, the super-rich must show their status by building bigger and better freak shows for the people.

One result of the giant freak show is that the culture is becoming less rational as it becomes more bizarre. The governor of New York, for example, gets a pass for murdering old people through ineptitude, but he could end up in jail for upsetting a gentle lady in his employ. Of course, that gentle lady could very well have an OnlyFans account and be in favor of mutilating children, so crazy people can pretend that sex is an imaginary part of the patriarchy.

In other words, the attention seeking society is one in which you can be both a vulgar degenerate and an intolerant prude. The media is awash in messages to young women saying they can only fulfill their purpose in life by being a slut. On the other hand, if a man treats a woman like a slut, he gets chased by an angry mom of sluts. You can be certain that the women claiming Cuomo hurt their delicate feelings are mouthy advocates for every vulgar item on the feminist to do list.

Morality is the software of every human society. It is the unwritten set of rules, the habits of mind, that allow strangers to navigate their way around one another. Morality must have a point and that point is reflected in the organization of society. In a warrior society, the qualities of the warrior are the goals of society. In an aristocratic society, privilege, duty, and honor bound the moral code. The morality of this age is wrapped around the desire for public attention, usually public outrage.

Another aspect of the new morality is that it is arbitrary and random. This is true of the carny world, where stardom is usually dumb luck. The world is full of waitresses that look great and can act. Those that get their big break are those who tick the right box at the right time for some reason. This sense that life and death, success and failure are controlled by the fickle gods of fate is the carny code. It is now becoming the America creed, as we embrace the carny culture.

This is clear in the Cuomo story. The reason Andrew Cuomo is governor is he is the son of a famous mobster. He won the lucky sperm contest. The Covid panic was another big break for him. He got to carry on like a hero, despite the fact he was recklessly putting the lives of old people in jeopardy. The fates were kind to Cuomo, until another turn of the wheel brought him low. Like the tragic figures popular in the carny world, he will be ruined because he made a small mistake, not a big one.

It turns out that the post-scarcity world is like a giant carnival tent. The only thing holding people together is a desire for attention. They need the crowd in order to get the attention of the crowd. Semi-retarded basketball players become billionaires because they are the best performers in the human flea circus. Dingbat barmaids become congressmen because they are good at getting attention. Post-scarcity America is carny world, a freak show celebrating the worst humanity has to offer.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Note: I have a final word on car buying the financialization of the car business behind the green door. The regular Taki post is up as well. Comments about it can be made here, as Taki no longer has a comment section.

The political reactionary is an essential component of left-wing mythology, going back to the French Revolution. In fact, most reactionaries are an invention of Left, so they always have an enemy. It is why they tend to go on murder sprees once they gain control of the institutions. The hunt for counter revolutionaries and running dog reactionaries provides fuel for permanent revolution. Once the revolution runs out of enemies, the revolution loses energy and collapses in on itself.

Even though the term reactionary has been abused by the Left, used as a slur against critics and opponents, it does not mean there are no reactionaries. The Thermidorian Reaction was a real thing. The Restoration of the French monarchy was, in part, a reactionary development. The restoration of the monarchy after the death of Cromwell could be classified as a reactionary event. After all, Charles II did order the body of Cromwell to be disinterred and displayed in chains.

While the Left owns the term, political reaction is not just a right-wing phenomenon nor is it strictly political. It can be argued that socialism and communism are reactions to the Industrial Revolution. After all, it was the Marxist who popularized the term. It was an 19th century pejorative for the current state of the world at the time. Various forms of socialism were a reaction to the sudden growth of a new class, who gained their wealth and power through the acquisition of industrial capital.

Narodism, which was a socialist movement in pre-revolutionary Russia, was a reaction to both the rise of capital and tsarism. The Narodniks, as they were called at the time, were a form of agrarian socialism rooted in the idea that the wealth of Russia was in the peasantry and small craftsman in the countryside. Initially, they were a reaction to the size and scale of the tsarist system of rule. They soon evolved into a reaction to the growing power of capital, just like other socialists of the age.

The interesting thing about the Narodniks is they were more than just a political or economic movement. They were a cultural movement as well. Faced with the sheer size of the tsarist system and the rapid cultural changes promised by the growth of industry, their response was to go back to the cultural roots of the people. The term Narodism comes from the word “narod”, a word equivalent to volk, which is a term familiar to most on the dissident right.

This is something relevant to this age. The technological revolution has allowed the managerial state to grow into something inconceivably massive. We live in an age in which there is little privacy. The eyes of the system are everywhere, even in our homes and in our private conversations. There is no way to escape the unblinking eye of the surveillance state. One force behind the current unrest is the growing sense that all of us are subject to the unwanted gaze of the managerial state.

Another aspect is the rise of the new class. Like the sudden appearance of the capital class in the industrial revolution, we suddenly have a new powerful class that gained its power and wealth through the capture of information. This new class did not get rich by building a better mouse trap. They got rich capturing an information bottleneck or a monopoly of some information service. Michael Bloomberg literally got rich from a monopoly on information to the financial service sector.

Another parallel to the Narodniks we are seeing is the “back to the people” approach by the various tribes on the dissident right. The Narodniks adopted the traditional clothing of the rural people and worked hard to portray themselves as the vanguard of the authentic Russian people. We see something like that on the dissident right. There is a desire to return to a more authentic way of living, rooted in local community. Like the Narodniks, the dissident right is more cultural than political.

The thing is though, the argument in favor of the Narodniks being reactionary falls apart when you look at their overall goals. They may have wanted to “return to the people” in a cultural and spiritual sense, but they did not want to return to a past system. Their program was a departure from the past and present. A proper way to describe what they imagined was something like a return to a point in the past and a do-over back to this point, but with a different set of choices.

This is something that kicks around the dissident right. There is an understanding that there is no going back. Even if you could restore things back to some point in the past when things were better, the roots of the present lie in that past. Liberal democracy is the fruit of American history. A do-over would most likely lead us right back to where we are now. In this regard, modern dissidents are more realistic than the Narodniks in that there is no idealized past or population at the center.

In this regard, civic nationalism is closer to modern reaction. They have created an idealized and largely fictional past. It was a series of innovation by their enemy that sent the country off course. They believe that if we just return to “our constitutional principles” everything will magically get back on the righteous path. Not only do they want to rip the past seventy years from the history books, but they would also like to remove all of the history that makes their imagined past plausible.

One last note on the Narodniks relative to this age. For the most part, the movement was a failure in that it failed to achieve any of its goals, other than the assassination of the Tsar in 1881. Their effort to educate and train the peasantry into a revolutionary force was a failure. The Narodniks were mostly urban intellectuals who had no understanding of the peasants. The assassination of the Tsar lost them whatever support they had among the people.

What they did, however, is lay the groundwork for what came next. Their idea of building an alternative base of power outside the system was adopted by 20th century revolutionary movements. Their tactics also informed others. Their organizational style and use of small group tactics were also a forerunner. Their ideas on generating debate outside what was allowed was an important contribution. They understood that the people needed to be reconditioned before they could challenge the system.

This is the final parallel to modern dissidents. Much of what goes on in dissident politics is a debate about challenging the prevailing orthodoxy. While we do not have peasants in the traditional sense, we do have them in a spiritual sense. Rewiring how they think of themselves and the system that created them, the “converting normie” thing, is an important part of dissident politics. Like the Narodniks, this must happen in small groups using non-traditional tactics to work around the system.

This is why the Narodniks and modern dissidents would fall outside the traditional definition of reactionary. The initial energy is a reaction to the changes in the culture brought about by rapid innovation, but there is no desire to return to the past. Instead, these movements are pre-reactionary and proto-revolutionary, a transition phase in the response to the current age. Dissident politics is a rejection of the modern and what created it, with a vague understanding of what comes next.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Note: The plugin I use for commenting broke for some unknown reason yesterday, which is why the comments disappeared. I disabled it so the default comment system is now running. it’s not great, but until the plugin is fixed, it will do.

Over the holidays, the great Jared Taylor was on one of the many live streams that pop up during the that time. He was asked if as a Southerner, he found some pleasure in seeing the statue toppling mobs now turning on statues of Lincoln. The irony of nonwhites going after Lincoln as a white supremacist is hard to miss. Taylor demurred, saying something along the lines that he abhorred any attacks on whites or white history, even if the person in question made war on his ancestors.

It was an interesting answer as it touches on the central problem of the current crisis we see playing out in America. Who’s to blame for it? The basic starting point of problem solving is to identify the problem and then identify the cause. When the mortgage market fell apart a decade ago, people blamed the bankers. Some people blamed the credit agencies or the regulators. There was plenty of blame to go around, so lots of people were blamed, but no one was punished.

In the case of the ongoing pogroms against white people, there is not much talk about who is responsible for it. Part of that is due to the prohibitions against white people talking about being white. One of the great ironies of this crisis is that the media is filled with invective about white people, but you will never see a white person start a sentence with “as a white person.” Whiteness is a thing that is only allowed to be a hobgoblin in the minds and mouths of the anti-whites.

Getting back to the Taylor example, he cannot laugh at the mob turning on Lincoln, because Lincoln was white, but that would apply to the mob as well. If the people doing the toppling are white, then the Taylor rule prevents a pro-white partisan from blaming them for it. An inescapable fact of the current crisis is the people leading the anti-white pogrom are often white or white presenting. Giving white people a pass on partisan grounds creates a problem when trying to assign blame.

This is why the anti-white pogroms have met so little resistance thus far. On the one hand you have the taboo against white people taking their own side. On the other hand, you have the face of the anti-white program being white or white presenting. If all of the anti-whites were black, then the problem of assigning blame would be simpler, but the leading anti-whites are almost always a pale face. The chief racketeer in the grievance rackets is a white woman named Robin DiAngelo.

The attacks on white people are just one example. The financialization of the economy starting in the 1980’s has created a massive wealth disparity. America now has an invisible over-class that owns almost all of the wealth. What they do not own directly, they control through what amounts to regulatory capture. They control the institutions that set the rules on how you can use your property. Inevitably, those rules favor the greed heads that control the financial system.

How did this happen? Who is responsible for it? Conservative will say that you cannot blame capitalism or free markets. Just like the taboo against whites taking their own side, they enforce a taboo against questioning the current economic order. Similarly, you cannot blame rich people, as that’s class warfare. If you do not like the rich people running things, get rich and challenge them. It is a version of build a better mousetrap so the world will beat a path to your door.

The Left side of the political class has an answer. They say the reason for the massive wealth disparity is white privilege and systemic racism. They focus on the white and white presenting faces running the corporations. This is a dangerous game for obvious reasons, so it is deliberately made absurd. The result, however, is white people are left with two choices when wondering who is to blame for this. They can either blame themselves or celebrate their dispossession.

This shape shifting that prevents the people from identifying the cause of the problems that plague their society is the result of democracy. When everyone has a vote, either in an election or in the economy, then everyone is to blame for the result. Don’t like woke capital? Don’t buy from it. Don’t like woke government? Don’t vote for it. The fact that no one actually voted for it or demanded it makes no difference. The blame for every problem is the imaginary neighbor who is demanding it.

This is one reason for the increasing unhappiness. It is not just the problems people can see all around them. It is the fact that there is no acceptable cause. People are left to blame themselves and their neighbors. If everyone is to blame, then everyone is the problem and everyone is in a war with everyone. The democratization of a society means the democratizing of blame. Self-hatred and self-loathing become the creed of the majority, with only the minorities are able to find a suitable enemy.

This is an unnatural condition as people are naturally inclined to find the source of their unhappiness and make that the focus of their anger. Eric Hoffer noted that “mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” Get enough angry people together with the raw material for a shared identity and they will find their devil. This is what makes being in the ruling class a dangerous game right now. It is why they are stacking the sandbags so high.

This is usually where the conservative pops back in and says it is wrong to pin the blame on people when the problem is systemic. The thing is though, the people at the top of any society have a duty to the system that creates them. They are the stewards of the system. The ruling elite of our liberal democracy are responsible for economic and cultural troubles underlying the current crisis. It is their failure to do their duty as a ruling elite that has led us to this point. They are to blame.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Note: The weekly Taki post is up here. It somewhat ties into the post below. Behind the green door is a new post on the 1960 classic, The Apartment. This was my first viewing, so I was surprised to like it, even thought I did not get any of the jokes.

When two parties attempt to negotiate a deal, the starting assumption is both sides actually want a deal. That is not always the case, but if one side thinks the other side is not coming to the table in good faith, they are wise to break off negotiations. For starters, they are wasting their time, since there is no deal to be had. Second, a party that starts a negotiation with a lie is going to keep lying. If you cannot trust anything they are saying, or their intentions, you cannot reason with them.

A simple example of this is car buying. When a person walks onto the lot, the salesman is trained to look for the signs that the person is just a tire kicker. He may profile him based on his appearance. A young guy looking at expensive sedans is probably not a serious buyer, for example. He will ask questions to determine if the person is serious about buying a car and willing to entertain an offer. The point is, he is determining if the other side is open to reason and ready to bargain in good faith.

This is the heart of any negotiation. Both sides have to start with the belief that the other side is amenable to reason and is bargaining in good faith. They may have different goals and very different ways of negotiating, but both sides have to be open to reason and come to the table in good faith. In other words, both sides want to find a deal that satisfies both sides. Otherwise, both sides are just wasting their time and perhaps harming their own interests in the process.

This is also the basis for popular government, which is nothing more than a long public negotiation. The various interests in a society have their goals regarding the issues they see as important and they work the process that is setup for hashing out the particulars and promoting their case. The public is both the referee and a counterparty. They make their voice heard throughout the process. The politicians are the hired negotiators, tasked with hashing out a compromise that satisfies the majority.

Like the simple deal between two parties, the democratic process relies on all sides being reasonable and operating in good faith. Sure, there are always bad actors trying to fool the public or game the process. The system, through elections, debates, public hearings, and investigations, is supposed to flush out the bad actors or at least correct what they have done after it is discovered. It may not be pretty, but the point is for reasonable people acting in good faith to reach a compromise.

What happens when the parties are not open to reason and they are not operating in good faith when they bargain? In a business negotiation, this often results in one side or the other breaking of negotiations. One side sees that the other is lying or up to shenanigans, so they stop wasting their time. This happens a lot, so firms train their people to look for the signs, so they do not waste their time. The most valuable commodity is time so you cannot waste it on bad deals.

In a democratic system of government, there are supposed to be rules to punish those who do not argue in good faith. Politicians who take bribes, for example, are removed from office and sent to prison. Interests that misrepresent themselves or defraud the public see their interests destroyed as a way to discourage the practice. There are laws that allow the media and the public to examine the claims of the various parties in order to root out corruption and deception. That is the theory, leastways.

That is clearly not where America is right now. Liberal democracy has evolved into one giant game of liar’s poker. Much like the financial markets, the big players in the system no longer have respect for the spirit of the rules. They never come to any deal in good faith and they are never open to reason. They want to “win” the deal by getting all of what they want at the expense of the other parties. In modern liberal democracy, no one is acting in good faith and no one is open to reason.

It is not just the big interests gaming the system. The system itself has been gamed to the point where only a sucker operates in good faith. The politicians, instead of operating as brokers and negotiators, are middlemen facilitating the looting of the system by the big players. Public debate is now a game of shadows, because the mass media lies about everything and is always pushing an agenda on behalf of the big players or their politicians working on their behalf.

Of course, the old adage about always knowing who the sucker in the room is when in a room full of sharps applies here. In the great hall that is where negotiations happen in a liberal democracy, the monied interests, the politicians, the media, and the shadowy players of the permanent ruling class put on a negotiating show. The public, until very recent, was never sure who was being conned by the grifters. As the saying goes, they were always the sucker in the system.

This is the heart of the current crisis. The reason the financial markets keep needing bailouts is because everyone inside that system is a liar. No one comes to a deal in good faith and no one is willing to reason with the other side. Everyone is trying to take advantage of everyone else. In a system of zero social trust, entropy is inevitable, which in human systems means collapse. This is why the financial markets careen from crisis to crisis, needing bailouts from the public.

Liberal democracy is mirroring the financial markets. This makes perfect sense, as the entire culture has been financialized. Republican virtue was removed from the official system long ago. What remained of it with the general public went away with the events of the last few years. America now finds itself in a world where no one acts in good faith and no one is open to reason. We have reached the point where we need a bailout, but there is no bailout for a liberal democracy that fails.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Note: There is a post up behind the green door on the movie Pulp Fiction, which clocks in at #95 on the top-100 list. There is a post up at Taki on the change we are seeing in the political climate.

What has gotten the most attention on this side this past week is the hypocrisy by the ruling class and their histrionic flunkies in the media over the peaceful protest in the Capitol last week. The first response of normal people is to note how the same people raging about these protests were celebrating violent riots in the summer. In what remains of the internet, people have been posting examples of people in politics or the media saying the exact opposite of what they said a few months ago.

Normal people have been programmed to think hypocrisy is important, even though it is clearly not important to the people in the ruling class. Normal people are taught that a civil society operates by a clear set of rules that apply to everyone. When the people in the ruling class have one set of rules for normal people and a different set of rules for themselves, normal people get mad. The ruling class, however, does not care, as there is one set of rules for them and another for the rest of us.

This focus on hypocrisy has left something unnoticed. That is the increasingly overwrought behavior of our rulers. They have become a collection of hysterical drama queens, who carry on like the world is about to end. This is the one thread connecting all of the insanity we have experienced from our rulers recently. Their reaction is wildly out of proportion from what is expected. The actual news, when you think about it, is always about their emotionally charged reaction to mostly normal events.

If we go way back to the 2016 election, the political class reacted as if the most important man in history had come out of his cryogenic chamber in Paraguay and seized control of the government. Instead of analyzing why it was there preferred option was rejected and making the normal adjustments, they concocted wild fantasies about invisible Russians and carried on like teenage girls for four years. It has already been forgotten, but they really believed that Russia stuff.

The Covid stuff is another great example. The local tyrants have used this minor public health issue to feature themselves in a drama of their own creation. In this story, they are heroically fighting the great virus enemy. They are rallying the people in a great cause to prevent the extinction of mankind. The media slavishly reports on their great deeds as if they are out slaying dragons or facing the Black Knight. The buffoonish governor of New York even had a book written about his heroism.

What should be a minor public health issue has been turned into a great drama acted out by emotionally unstable people. According to the CDC, over 250 million people have been tested with 22 million confirmed cases. Total deaths in 2020 were in line with what you would expect, given the country’s demographics. A little higher due to Covid and a little higher due to the reaction. Sober-minded people would have treated this as a very bad flu season. Our hysterical rulers treated it as the end times.

The most recent example of the overwrought behavior by our rulers is the reaction to the protest last Wednesday. The “storming of the Capitol” was really just a bunch of people walking past the cops and going inside the building. Sure, juvenile pranksters livestreamed themselves doing shenanigans, but other than the Pence aide murdering Ashli Babbitt, it was nothing more than a frat house prank. It was nothing like the Kavanaugh protests just a short time ago.

The reaction by the rulers is as if a rebel army laid siege to the Capitol and set fire to most of the city. The FBI has been tasked with hunting down, in the most dramatic way, all of the protestors. Their media lackeys are now calling the Capitol protestors “insurrectionists” and demanding they be destroyed. Instead of calling it a protest, they are calling it a siege. Again, the image is of a foreign army attacking the center of the empire, like the Gauls sacking Rome in 387 BC.

For the inauguration they have now deployed army and national guard units. The media lackeys are bragging that they will be prepared and enthusiastic about using lethal force if any protestors turn up that day. Pelosi has been trying to get the Army to remove Trump from office. She apparently thinks he could launch a nuclear attack. We have come a long way from the America where citizens were expected to petition their government for the redress of grievances.

What we are seeing is the reaction of people who are no longer engaged in normal life, but instead are playing the game of life. They are immersed in a live action role playing game operated by juvenile narcissists. The ruling class gets to imagine themselves as world historical figures and every event puts the world on a knife edge. Their actions will determine the outcome. The entire ruling class is swept up in these false dramas that they get to play, while the rest of the country suffers.

Another clue is how they echo one another in the use of dramatic language to describe mundane events. One uses some over-the-top language then the rest of them are repeating it, maybe adding on some more dramatic language. The “protest” went from “riot” to “insurrection” to “horrendous insurrection” in a few cycles. They are competing with one another to show their loyalty to the group. What matters to them in this game is the opinion of the people in the game, not the rest of us.

America has reached a point where the ruling class and its various support structures is no longer connected to the people over whom it rules. They are inside Versailles or the Winter Palace, imagining what is happening outside. Meanwhile, outside, the world is nothing like the rulers imagine. The people outside look at the palaces and try to understand what is happening inside, based on the noises and behavior they see from the organs of the state.

That really is the root of their anger. The outside broke though the wall and gently reminded them that life is not a game and they are not great men. In the game they are always the winners, but in real life they are judged by their actions. It may take a while, but they will be held accountable. This is what angers them. They hate this reality, which is why they cling to the alternative reality of their fantasy, but reality does not go away when you stop believing it.

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